In the last two decades, more than ever before dentists must determine how to properly maintain their focus on ethics and professionalism in the face of powerful commercial pressures. While there is encouragement for ethical conduct within the dental profession, there is still relatively little assistance available to dentists and dental students for judging what conduct is ethically best in concrete situations. For many years, Dental Ethics at Chairside has served as an invaluable resource for tens of thousands of dentists and dentistry students, and this third edition of the gold standard in the field is thoroughly revised and updated. In addition to exploring ongoing and critical issues such as the patient-professional relationship, patients with compromised capacity, confidentiality, justice and the inadequacies of society's health care systems, and dentistry as a business, the third edition addresses emerging ethical issues related to conflicts of interest, dental professionalism, advertising and social media, the serious indebtedness of graduating dental students, bad outcomes and bad work, the explosion of aesthetic dentistry, acquiring new skills and new technology, the impact of the market on the professional-patient relationship, and many others. The book includes fourteen realistic cases and commentary about dilemmas in dentistry, as well as online resources for further research and study.

The largest unmet health need in this country—and potentially the most costly—is for dental care; meeting this need would strain existing personnel and facilities beyond capacity. This book reports an experiment in delivering dental care by means that are not traditional but preserve the high standards that have been achieved by American dentistry.

At the Forsyth Dental Center in Boston, Massachusetts, graduate dental hygienists received additional training in the administration of local anesthesia, drilling decayed teeth, and filling them. The program was designed to prepare dental auxiliaries to undertake restorative treatment under the direct supervision of a dentist who assumes ultimate responsibility for planning treatment, assessing the quality of performance, and assuring the patient's well-being.

The Forsyth experiment yielded information on the competence of auxiliaries trained in this fashion, on patient acceptance, on the efficiency of various patterns of practice, and on the potential economic effects of delivering care in this way. The results of the study are bound to stir controversy, but they cannot be ignored by anyone who cares about a major problem in health care.